


Rabbit

by sanguinity



Category: Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles
Genre: 5+1, Alternate Timelines, Bechdel Test Pass, Canon Timelines, Canon-Typical Gore, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-04
Updated: 2014-05-04
Packaged: 2018-01-21 19:52:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,031
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1562045
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sanguinity/pseuds/sanguinity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rabbits are tough little bastards.</p><p>Five Jesses who have seen Judgement Day, and one who has not.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rabbit

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Teaotter](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Teaotter/gifts).



> With my apologies to the Royal Australian Submarine Service: I couldn't find a source for Australian submarine jargon (or for the other Commonwealth submarine services), so I used US Naval submarine jargon instead. I realize this is probably irritating to knowledgeable readers, and I would be overjoyed to take correction.
> 
> Many thanks to my betas and Ozpicker: tournamentofhearts, grrlpup, and lastwingedthing. Y'all made this so much better. Any remaining errors or faults are, as always, my own.

**Judgement Day: August 4, 1997**

"It's because she blew up the world," Tegan said to the new kid. "I begged Mum and Dad for a baby sister, and so they finally brought one home, a special pressie just for me. And there she was, all round and ugly and scowling, looking like she hated every single thing in the world. And so _BOOM!_ " The kid jumped at Tegan’s dramatics. "She blew it right up. Boomer was a special pressie for everybody, it turned out."

Everyone knew the Americans and Russians blew up the world, of course; Boomer had only been a little baby, after all. She could just remember Mum scolding her sister for calling her that—"Tegan Christina Flores! For God's sake, your sister's name is Jesse!"—but Mum had been gone for a long time now. 

"And if you're not careful, she'll blow up you." The kid looked across at Boomer with wide eyes; Boomer scowled back, playing along with her sister. Some of the other kids sniggered, but Boomer glared at them until they subsided. Tegan leaned in close to the new kid and hissed, "So you better do _everything she says."_

And thus Boomer and Tegan inducted him into their little warren of rubble-rabbits.

The new kid was a mess; they nearly always were. This one had obviously never lived as a rabbit. It was Boomer's job to look after the little ones, and so she settled into spending her days teaching him how to stay alive, and spending her nights holding him when he whimpered in his sleep. 

Four days later they ran into adults, and the kid gave a surprised shout of joy. Everyone scattered at his yell, and for a minute there was nothing but children running in all directions. Boomer grabbed the kid's arm and dragged him with her as she ran.

When she finally thought they were safe, she let him go. The kid hit her hard in the chest with both hands, shoving her away. "I want my mum! I want my dad! I don't want _you!"_

"Was that your mum?" she asked, urgent. He would be a damn fool to want to go back, but if it was his mum, she would take him. "Was that your mum?" The kid began to cry, and Boomer shook his arm to get his attention. "Tell me, did you know those people?" The kid shook his head violently through his tears. 

Boomer sighed. She sat herself down in the shelter of a low wall, then pulled him down to join her, settling him between her legs. He leaned into her chest and sobbed while she petted his back and whispered to him, waiting for the rest of the warren to come find them.

By the time the kid finally cried himself out, Tegan had joined them against the wall. Boomer caught glimpses of the other kids taking shelter under various bits of cover scattered around.

Tegan tossed a pebble at a nearby olive tree. "Listen to me," she said, concentrating on the tree, "you don't want to be hanging about with adults." The kid was pretending not to listen, but his twitch gave him away. "Adults are stupid. They're stuck on what they remember from before the war. They stay in one place, they build things, and then the planes come and bomb them."

The kid thrashed in Boomer's arms. She made soothing noises into his ear while she held him tight.

"That's what your mum and dad did, wasn't it?" Tegan asked. She was remembering their own parents, Boomer could hear it in her sister's voice. "They built things." 

The kid made an unhappy noise. Tegan leaned her head back against the wall and sighed.

"It's better to be a rabbit," Boomer said, for her sister as much as the kid. "Rabbits are tough and fast and hard to catch."

"You eat rabbits," the kid protested.

Boomer laughed. Boomer was the best with snares, but the kid wasn't even close to picking up the knack of it yet. "That so? Have _you_ caught one yet?" He shook his head. "Not so easy to kill, are they? You watch them and learn. And when you catch one, you let me know." 

 

**Judgement Day: July 25, 2004**

Everyone knew the Americans and Chinese started the war. It was less clear who, exactly, had bombed Australia—most TV stations were showing static by the second day—but everyone agreed that whoever it was, Australia had given back as good as it got.

The mystery was who had been sending bombing drones in the decade since. 

Real information about the drones was hard to come by. The drones themselves were unmarked, and seemed to have no consistent point of origin. A few years ago, Tegan and Jesse had managed to snare one; not even its components had manufacturing marks. (That stunt had gotten them ejected from the commune they were living with: two people had died in the reprisals.) It was difficult to find out what others knew, either. Setting up a radio transmitter was a quick way to bring a drone down on yourself, and the shortwave stations that flitted in and out of existence were long on speculation and short on facts.

There were days that Jesse could almost believe the story that Martians were finishing off what humans had begun.

The summer Jesse turned sixteen, a submarine of Americans appeared off the beach. Jesse remembered the Freo docks from when she was a kid—she had been fascinated by the massive container ships and the towering cranes that tended them—but sailing around the world was part of the hazy, improbable Before. In the real world, boats stayed close to home. It had been a long time since she had seen anything that had come from even as far as Adelaide, let alone across the entirety of the Pacific.

According to the Yanks, it wasn't Martians who were sending the drones, but a Californian computer gone rogue. As stories went, it wasn't as entertaining as the one about the Martians, but Jesse enjoyed it for a change of pace. But then the Yanks told the rest of their stories and brought out their show-and-tell: a cyborg nearly indistinguishable from human. 

Luckily for Jesse, the sub was shorthanded, and Jesse could turn a wrench as well as anyone. 

“Jess, are you sure you want to do this?” Tegan pressed. “Because I’ve read this book. You get to San Diego and find nothing but a coke bottle and a window blind.”

Jesse grinned. “I should be so lucky. Bin the bottle, the war’s over, and I’m home in time for tea.” 

Tegan didn’t laugh. 

Jesse stopped walking. "The war isn't here, is it? The Americans know a name, and they know a location. What the hell do the diggers have?"

"Food," Tegan said, and Jesse laughed. The Americans had tucked in as if stewed rabbit might be both the best and last meal of their lives.

"Then get us some of that. That's one of the things they came for, after all." When Tegan continued to look unhappy, Jesse sighed. "I can’t muck around here, playing with blocks and waiting for Skynet to come kick it all down again. Not when I’ve got a chance to do something that might actually matter.”

“You don’t even know Skynet exists,” Tegan said.

The submarine's sail sat black in the river mouth. "It’s just a look ‘round. If I don’t like what I see, I’ll catch the next boat home.”

Tegan looked away for a moment. When she looked back, she tried to smile. Jesse's chest felt tight. “Take some time to see the sights first. You don't want to travel all that way and miss the…” Tegan stopped, frowning. “What does San Diego even have?”

Jesse had no idea. “I hear they have rubble heaps to die for.”

Tegan laughed. “Bring me back some rubble, then. I want the kind that glows in the dark." She gave her sister a fierce hug. "I’ll have dinner waiting when you get back.”

"Thanks, mum," Jesse teased, and that—the reminder that it had only been the two of them since forever—was the thing that pushed them both over the edge. Jesse tried not to cry as she kissed her sister's cheek, then hoisted her duffle and hurried for the raft on the beach.

"Hooroo," Tegan called after her, and Jesse turned back to flash her a quick grin.

"I'll bring you back that coke bottle!" Jesse shouted back. 

 

 **Judgement Day: April 21, 2011**   

The shore party landed in Perth to find machines lying in ambush on the beach, and suddenly Jesse had other things to think about than the mission Derek wouldn't come back from. She aimed for the chip and aimed for the chip again, and Garvin and Conway were the only Carters who didn't make it back to the mini-sub.

"Since when are there tin cans in Australia!?" Dietze exploded when they had space to breathe again.

"Since they figured out how John Connor was feeding his people, I presume," Jesse answered, voice tight. "If you can take out the supply lines, there's no need to take out the army." 

Under the cover of night, and with the assistance of a diversion, they tried again. The shore party spent thirty hours on recon, but found only bloating goat carcasses and unidentifiable corpses. 

When they reported back, Queeg was dispassionate. “We will find a new source of supply. Make ready for departure.”

Jesse’s eyes widened. “We can’t just leave! They might still be out there!”

“The _Jimmy Carter_ is too unique a strategic resource to risk on a supply network that may be sourced elsewhere. Skynet knows that we are here; we cannot stay in these waters. Instruct the crew to stand by for departure.”

“That's my _sister_ out there!"

“Commander Flores, do your duty or be relieved.” When Jesse didn’t respond immediately, Queeg turned to the COB. “Chief of the Boat—”

But Jesse stood back and raised her hands. “Aye, Captain." She turned to the others in the control room. "You heard him! Stand by for departure!” She left the room.

Four minutes later she let herself out the escape trunk carrying two plasma rifles and an inflatable pack with all the ammo and vaccines she thought she could carry, and swam hard for the beach.

Queeg didn’t send anyone after her, which at least meant she didn't have to worry about endangering any of the Carters. It took four hours for Jesse to win through the patrolled zone on the beach, and then she set about searching for conclusive evidence of what had become of her sister.

Even on J-Day, Skynet had never hit Oz as hard as it hit California, but now the area around Perth was indistinguishable from the hellhole that had once been Los Angeles. It took two weeks for Jesse to pick up what she hoped was a human signal: piles of rock that might be irregularly spaced cairns, constructed to sidestep the machines’ tendencies to look for straight lines, right angles, and regular spacing. It was barely there at all, and Jesse feared that in her desperation, she was making up patterns that didn’t exist. In her nightmares, the so-called trail led to nothing more than a coke bottle and a flapping window blind.

It led to Tegan. One minute Jesse had a happy collie barking about her knees, and then the next minute Tegan was on her, both sisters semi-hysterical in their relief. “I aimed for the chip! I aimed for the chip!” Tegan babbled as she hugged Jesse tight.

“Good girl,” Jesse said, as if Tegan wasn’t five years older. Jesse had all the combat experience between them, and on every supply run home, she had spent every minute she could spare teaching Tegan what to do if the machines ever came to Perth. “You did good, you did good, you did just like I taught you.” 

“You’re a _crap_ teacher,” Tegan said, pulling away and shoving her sister hard, “I didn’t hit the chip once. Not _once._ They just kept _coming._ ”

Jesse pulled her back into a hug. “You still did good. You hear me? You stayed alive, and that’s more than hardly anybody manages. You stayed alive, you kept some other people alive, and you gave me a way to find you.” She buried her fingers in her sister’s hair. “That’s all we gotta do. A few of us stay alive, and next thing you know, the world’ll be up to its eyeballs in people again.”

 

**Judgement Day: April 20, 2011**

After executing one Charles Fischer and releasing another, Jesse watched Derek through new eyes, trying to see the differences that came of not having had to live through Fischer's monstrosities. God knew that at Serrano Point, holding Derek in the privacy of the dark, she had ached with the desire to erase that history for him. She knew better, of course: broken things stayed broken.

And yet here was Derek, miraculously unscathed by the monster.

It made less difference in him than she had imagined. There were still nights he cried in his sleep, but unlike at Serrano Point, he didn't talk about it afterwards. She knew enough of his new history to know they had still met at Eagle Rock, but what, in the absence of Fischer's talons in his psyche, had pushed Derek to try to eat his gun that day, Jesse didn't know and Derek wasn't volunteering. 

However, for a guy with so little desire to discuss his past, he sure had a lot of questions about what it used to be.

"Who was my best friend?" he asked one day. "When you knew me before? The other me."

"It was the same you," she responded testily. "Believe me, I would know your annoying bullshit anywhere. Who do you _think_ your best friend was?"

"If I knew, I wouldn't be asking."

"Sayles," she said, just to demonstrate the ridiculousness of the question.

 _"Sayles?"_ he said, his forehead creasing. 

Jesse frowned. There should have been no question in his mind that she was pulling his leg: Sayles was a good enough bloke as far as it went, but Derek had no respect for him. It was Sumner that Derek had been inseparable from. 

"Are you sure?" he asked.

"Uh-huh. You wrote him a note asking if he would be your friend, tick yes or no. Used to carry it right next to your heart. Most disgusting display of affection I've ever seen."

He laughed, but there was a lingering tension in him that she couldn't place. 

More frequently, however, Derek wanted to know about the war.

"What does it matter?" she finally exploded one day, after he had ruined some perfectly good afterglow with his questions. "I'm not there now, am I? Neither are you." She pulled the sheet more snugly around her shoulders. Aircon was such a beautiful thing.

"You don't understand," he began, "I created that future. I made choices—"

"No," she cut him off. "You are not a god, Derek. You made choices, I made choices, John Connor made choices. We all made choices. Hell, there's a twelve-year-old Jesse out there somewhere, making choices. Whether to swim at the leisure centre or swim at the beach. For all you know, the war hinges on the choice _she_ made today."

"Don't be ridiculous. The future of humanity doesn't rest on the choices of a twelve-year-old."

"No? Oh, that's right. They rest on the choices of a sixteen-year-old. How's that going, by the way?" 

Derek lay back in the pillows with a groan. Jesse sympathized with his frustration: her own sixteen-year-old was beginning to crack, despite Jesse's best efforts. She urgently needed to find a way to either move the plan along or get Riley to hold it together for a little longer.

"So, what did she choose today?" Derek asked, and Jesse looked up with a start. "The twelve-year-old you, the one who's holding our fate in her hands. Leisure centre or the beach?"

Jesse grinned. "Oh, the beach, no question. Always were prettier boys at the beach."

 

 **Judgement Day: October 13, 2019**  

"You put Metal in a command position over humans, and you named it _Queeg?_ What kind of sad bastards do you have running your show?" Jesse stood in the _HMAS Rankin's_ tiny wardroom with Captain Wilson and the man who, until a minute ago, she had understood to be the commanding officer of the _USS Jimmy Carter._   

"We couldn't find a sub commander that survived J-Day," the Yank protested. He claimed to be a lieutenant, but he wore no rank insignia, no fish, no nothing. He looked like a damned rabbit in his ripped-up jumpsuit. "We had no choice but to use their own trip-eight."

"And who do you have running the rest of your fleet? Captains Ahab and Bligh?"

"Commander Flores." The rebuke in her CO's voice was clear.

She dragged her attention back to her captain. "Sir." Her contempt for the man next to her, and for the organization he served, was still all over her face, but she didn't see much reason to hide it. _Queeg, Jesus Christ, what had they been thinking?_

"There is no 'rest' to their fleet, just as there's no 'rest' to ours." Jesse glanced away, accepting the rebuke. Only two boats in service on J-Day—the usual RAN problem with personnel shortages in the submarine service—and the _HMAS Farncomb_ had had the bad luck to be in port when the nukes flew. For a while, there had been some surviving RAN surface ships, but Skynet had been picking those off ever since the military had realized that nothing human had instigated the war. The _Rankin_ had been on her own for a long time now.

"As Lieutenant Dietze says, they have a scrubbed T-888 in command of the _Jimmy Carter_. The lieutenant is authorized to recruit a human submarine commander if he can find one. Consequently, in support of their efforts to take down Skynet, I'm seconding you to the North American Command."

Jesse blinked. "Sir?" 

"You'll spend the cruise to Avila Beach training on the _Jimmy Carter's_ systems. I am granting them the option of commissioning you into their own service when you arrive."

"I'm not qual’d for a nuke." The entire Australian submarine service was diesel and always had been. Getting fuel to keep the _Rankin_ running was a bitch and a half, but at least she could run on vegetable oil in a pinch. Jesse didn't know the first goddamned thing about nuclear reactors, except that they could melt a hole through your hull if you so much as blinked wrong.

The farmboy next to her shifted uncomfortably. "No one is."

"I beg your pardon?"

Her CO sighed. "When they recaptured the _Jimmy Carter_ , all of her original crew was presumed dead. None of her replacement crew has been qualified for submariner service."

Jesse stared at the farmboy, her gaze flicking to where the dolphins should have been on his chest. Jesus Fucking Christ. A whole crew of nubs. They were running a deathtrap. 

And that was what they were using to fight Skynet.

She shook her head, and then gathered herself into a proper stance. "Well, then, sir. It looks like my first order of business will be qualifying the crew."

For the first time, Dietze smiled. "Ma'am."

She flicked him a glance. "We'll see if you look so happy the first time you dinq, Lieutenant." At his questioning look, she expanded, "Delinquent in qualifications."

His smile broadened. "Not gonna happen, ma'am."

She let him see her amusement. She supposed she, too, would be relieved at the prospect of a qual-board, if she and her crewmates had brought a sub across the Pacific on luck and prayer. "Requesting the loan of two QPOs, if you can spare them, sir."

"You'll have to clear that with Captain Queeg." He looked as if the name pained him, too. "He will be retaining command of the vessel until John Connor accepts your commission. If he gives his authorization, you can have them."

“Sir,” Jesse acknowledged.

“Pack your kit; you will be returning with Lieutenant Dietze to the _Jimmy Carter_ within the hour. You’re both dismissed.”

Dietze preceded her through the door, and Captain Wilson called her name. She looked back.

“You make sure you show those Yanks how you run a boat, Commander.”

Jesse grinned. “They’ll have no idea what hit them, Sir.”

 

**Judgement Day: Not Yet Known**

Jesse was twelve when the first machine came for her. It worked its way up the beach, showing her photo and asking for her by name, and there were only two reasons she lived to see the end of the day: her friends closing ranks and pretending they didn’t know her, and the intervention of an American woman, Petty Officer Riley Dawson of the _USS Jimmy Carter_. 

“You’re gonna have to be brave,” Riley told her, as they waited for it to walk into the trap she had laid. Jesse was still in swimmers under the tee Riley had stolen for her, but they had swapped her thongs for ill-fitting sneakers. “You’re going to keep the time for me, and you’re going to watch very carefully everything I do.” She took Jesse’s chin in her hand, and made Jesse look at her. “This is going to be upsetting, but I want you to remember, it’s not a person, it’s a _thing._ Can you do that for me?”

Jesse nodded. She would do anything for this woman right now.

“Good girl. This is something you’ll need to know, and this may be my only chance to teach you.” She returned her gaze to the street, where the thing had just walked into view. Metal glinted under its skin, and Jesse could feel doom gathering tight around her chest. Riley squeezed her hand. “Be ready to run if this doesn’t work,” she whispered.

Then the thing went down in a shower of sparks. It thrashed, twitched, and lay still.

“Time!” Riley shouted, running out from their hiding place and kicking the now-dead electrical cord away from the puddle the thing had fallen in. “ _Move_ , Jesse!”

Jesse moved, marking the time: eighteen seconds past the minute. Then she did her best to keep her eyes open and on Riley’s knife while Riley scalped the robot with a great, sucking, tear of noise. She twisted open a small panel in its skull and levered out a chip from its temple. There was a flash and a pop as it came free, and then the smell of fried electronics.

Jesse looked at the watch, marking the time with her thumbnail. Her maths had fled, she had to count backwards around the dial from the eighteen mark. “Fifty-two seconds,” Jesse said, and then suddenly Riley’s hands, rock-steady just the instant before, were shaking so badly that she dropped both the knife and the chip.

“Oh god oh god oh god oh—” Riley moaned, then turned away and vomited. She pushed at her hair with shaking hands, trying to pull it back. Jesse scrambled over to help her. Riley vomited a second time, then knelt there, gasping for breath. “We have beach pounders to do this shit.” She sat back and wiped her mouth, then gave Jesse an unhappy look. “Sorry, that’s—” she waved a hand at the thing, its scalp hanging half over one eye, its cranium gleaming dimly through darkening blood. She laughed shakily. “That was my first time. At least you’ll have seen it once when it’s your turn, lucky you.”

Jesse looked at the thing at their feet, thinking of Tegan and her parents. ‘Lucky’ wasn’t any part of what she was feeling.

"Shhh now, there," Riley said, and gathered Jesse into her arms. Riley rocked her gently while Jesse shuddered. "Don't you worry, I'm gonna teach you" she said, and kissed Jesse's temple, right where the terminator's chip had been. "Everything you need to know, I'm gonna teach you."

 

The next morning, after a bad night in a worse motel, Riley dropped a large, lumpy duffel on the bed next to Jesse. 

“October 13, 2019, Skynet is gonna let loose every nuke in the world. You’ll survive by being out at sea on an Australian Navy submarine. Some years later, you’ll be a key figure in the war against Skynet. Because of that, Skynet wants you dead.” She flashed Jesse a rueful smile. “You probably noticed that last bit. My job is to get you to J-Day alive.” 

Jesse nodded. Their window looked onto the motel swimming pool; an older woman was doggedly doing laps, despite its tiny, awkward shape. Jesse felt oddly disconnected, as if swimming pools and beaches were part of a world that she could see, but not touch.

“Here’s the bad news,” Riley continued, and Jesse laughed, because she hadn’t heard any good news since the moment Jenny had told her there was a creepy American wandering around the beach looking for her. “You’re going to be a sitting duck on that sub. If a terminator tries to sabotage it, you can trust in your captain and crewmates to deal with the damage itself. They’re sailors, they’re trained to handle that. What they’re not trained for is killing terminators. That’ll be your job. Kill the terminator, so the rest of the crew has a fighting chance to save the boat.”

“Right,” Jesse said, resting her face on her knees. “Kill the terminator, easy.” She wanted to go home. She didn’t have a home. Riley reached out and ran a sympathetic hand through Jesse’s hair. 

“And if it comes after me, instead of the sub?” Jesse asked.

“Same thing, kill the terminator.”

Kill the terminator. In the confined space of a submarine, with the entire ocean right outside the hull. Jesse turned her head to look at Riley. The woman’s eyes shone with her faith. Jesse desperately wanted to live up to it. She didn't think she could.

“How about just... skipping the submarine?” Jesse asked. "Find a nice hole in the ground, and wait out J-Day there."

Riley gave her a sad smile. “You have to be on the _Rankin_ , because everything you do in the war is critical on you being a submarine officer. You need to get your dolphins before J-Day hits.”

Jesse took a deep breath and nodded at the duffel. “So what’s in that? A magic terminator-killing gun? We could have used that yesterday.”

“That," Riley said, "is how you'll beat the terminator. Before you step foot on the _Rankin_ , you’re going to know every circuit, every pipe, every conduit. Every dead space, hatch, and bulkhead. You’re going to be fully qualified, or as good as, before you’ve even seen a submarine. And after you’ve got that sub memorized, you’re gonna learn it all again, and this time, you’re gonna develop a plan A and a plan B—and then a backup to your A and B—for every compartment on that boat. This, sailor,” she said, lifting the duffel into Jesse’s lap, “is gonna be your textbook, your Bible, and your stack of trashy romances behind the bed for the next six years. Which is why they sent me instead of some beach-pounder. You’re gonna qualify for your fish, and I’m gonna be your QPO.” 

Jesse slid back the zipper. It was full of manuals, binders, DVDs, and CD-ROMs. 

“By the way,” Riley said. Jesse looked up from the atmosphere control manual she was flipping through. “Commander Dietze sends his respects. Says to tell you he had nightmares for weeks after you sat his qual-boards.” Riley grinned. “He asked me to return the favor.”

 

“What do I do in the future?” Jesse asked during the long drive to Adelaide. “In the war?” Riley had said they couldn't live in Perth, not with Skynet looking for them there. Jesse was supposed to be studying, but couldn't concentrate on the manual in her lap. Instead, she watched the scenery slowly pass by, one kilometer indistinguishable from the next.

Riley glanced at her. “Tell me the major components of the electrical system and their physical locations, bow to aft.”

Jesse glanced at the page, then marked it with her finger and recited them. None of it meant much of anything to her yet.

“You were captain of the _USS Jimmy Carter_ when John Connor’s first asinine attempt at alliance with the machines went tits-up.” She flashed Jesse a conspiratorial smile. “Sorry, Carters don’t tend to be Connor fans. It’s a tradition.” 

“What?" Jesse asked, with the first burst of energy she had felt all day. "Ally with the machines? With the…?” she pointed behind them, where Perth should be. “With _those?”_

Riley laughed. “The reaction of everyone in the company, I’m told. You prevented mutiny, convinced the machines we’re not a bunch of 'savage heathens,'” she rolled her eyes, obviously having her own thoughts on machine-human relations, “and negotiated a new alliance. Which has scared Skynet enough that it’s out for your blood. No, tell me the battery configuration,” she ordered, when Jesse opened her mouth to ask another question.

“I don’t know, I haven’t gotten there yet.”

Riley raised her eyebrows expectantly, and Jesse re-opened her manual. It was difficult to concentrate; the schematic on the page held no urgency compared to the past two days, or to the future Riley described.

When she could finally recite the battery specifications to Riley’s satisfaction, Jesse asked, “How do I do it?”

“Do what?”

“What you said. Prevent mutiny, negotiate the alliance.”

“Sorry, can’t help you. I’ve never heard it told the same way twice. You should get Goodnow to tell it to you, her version's great." Riley paused, considering. "Although you might want to give her a couple of years to work up her embellishments first.”

“So how do you know—”

“Nope,” Riley interrupted. “Tell me about the aux generator.”

Several more Ks went by while Jesse studied.

“So how does Skynet know it’s me?” Jesse asked, when she was allowed to ask questions again.

Riley shrugged. “It’s not that difficult to learn a name.”

“No,” Jesse tried again, "why does it have to be me? If I don’t make it through J-Day—”

“You’ll make it through J-Day,” Riley said.

“—no, but if I didn’t,” Jesse insisted, ignoring Riley's noise of disagreement, “why couldn’t whoever was captain instead of me do it? What’s so special about what _I_ do that Skynet has to kill _me?”_

“You’re Captain Jesse Flores,” Riley said, as if that meant something. “Everyone knows that it was Captain Flores who turned the war around.” 

“But why—?”

“Stop that. What do you want me to say, that it could have been anyone? That the only reason Skynet went after _you_ —the only reason your family died—is because Goodnow tells a good story and Skynet fell for it? Right now, right here, their deaths have to mean something. So start at the top again: major components of the electrical system and their locations, bow to aft.”

 

Her name was Jesse Escondo, she was sixteen years old, she had already applied for admittance to ADFA as a Naval midshipman, and she could diagram any section of any compartment in a Collins-class boat.

She was beginning to despair that she wouldn’t survive her first cruise.

“No,” Riley said, discarding her draft plan for encountering a terminator in the wardroom. “Try again.”

“There’s nothing in there to use!” Jesse protested. 

“Figure it out,” Riley told her, implacable, and Jesse exploded, pushing the manuals off the table.

“This is pointless! If one of those things gets on the _Rankin_ , I’m dead! I can plan and plan, but there’ll be nothing I can do to stay alive if it wants me dead!” Riley tried to interrupt, but Jesse rolled right over the top of her, semi-hysterical. “It’s the truth! You know it’s the truth!”

“Sailor!” Riley barked.

“I’m not a sailor!” Jesse screamed back. 

Riley hit her. “You will be,” she said, as Jesse reeled. “And when you are, you’ll need to know what to do.” When Jesse continued to look mulish, Riley asked, “Is this what your sister died for?”

Jesse glared at her, still rubbing her jaw. “She didn’t die _for_ anything. She’s just dead.”

“Jesse,” Riley warned.

“She was there and I wasn’t and she might as well have been hit by a bus for all the difference it makes to anything.”

“If you survive the next time a machine comes for you, it’ll be because Tegan—”

“Don’t you talk about my sister!” Jesse snapped. “You don’t know anything about her!”

“Then don’t dishonor her death!” Riley shouted, standing over Jesse. “If it didn’t mean something then, then make it mean something now!” She retrieved the schematic from the floor, turned it the right way around, and put it on the table in front of Jesse. “What’s behind the walls?”

“I don’t know.”

“Then find out!”

Twenty minutes later Jesse looked up from her diagrams, still seething with frustration. “It doesn’t make any sense! Why did it try for me in Perth at all? Why give us years to plan, when it could have gone for me in the sub and been done with it?”

Riley shrugged. “Sometimes it makes mistakes. We wouldn’t have hung on this long if it didn’t.” 

There was something brittle about Riley’s shrug, and in that moment, Jesse knew. “Who gave the order?”

“What?” Riley asked. Her eyes were too wide, and any doubts Jesse might have had were gone. 

“Don't deny it. It wasn’t their machine that day, it was ours. Who gave the order?” 

“Skynet set a terminator back to kill you—”

“Maybe. But not to 2009.” Jesse stood up and came around the table, breathing hard. “Skynet sent it to, what, 2017? 2018? _You_ sent the one to 2009!”

“No," Riley protested. "It wasn't me." 

The two women stared at each other.

“So who?” Jesse asked, “Your famous John Connor?”

Riley stayed silent.

"You needed it to kill. It couldn’t touch me—not when saving me was the whole _point_ —but it had to be convincing. It had to look like it was in earnest. So it killed—” Tears were building, and Jesse was having trouble keeping control. “So it killed my family. Who gave the order?”

“Jesse. Your family didn’t survive J-Day. You looked for them for years, and never found them. They were dead anyway.”

“Answer me! _Who gave the order?”_

Riley took a deep breath. “You did.”

Jesse stared at her.

“It was your mission, start to finish.”

“You’re lying.”

“Connor got the intelligence that you were a target, consulted you—”

“You’re lying!”

“You don’t know what the war is like! You have no idea. What you’ll do, what any of us’ll do, to end it.”

“No,” Jesse protested. “Not that. _Never_ that. I would never order my family murdered.”

“Wouldn’t you?”

“No!” 

Riley’s smile was vicious. “ _So what does it mean that you did?”_

Jesse lunged for her and Riley spun with it, dragging them both to the ground. Jesse fought hard, but Riley still managed to pin her.

“Everyone you know is going to die, Jesse. _Everyone_. You’ll only have your crewmates left, that’s it. And then they’re going to die, in twos and threes. Sometimes because of orders you give; sometimes because of orders you don’t give. Sometimes because of a stupid random clusterfuck that leaves people dead for no reason at all. Your mom, your dad? Tegan? When you planned this mission, they had been dead for decades. Judgement Day or 2009, what does it matter? The only question was whether it would mean anything.”

Jesse was sobbing. Riley pushed off the girl and stood.

“How do I know there’s a way to survive that sub? Because you wouldn’t have done that to your family for no reason.” Jesse curled into a ball, still crying. “ _You_ thought it could be done, and _you_ thought it was important. So pull it together, Jesse. That thing is coming for you. You're the one who chose to gamble their lives on yourself. Make their deaths mean something.”

When Jesse didn’t respond, Riley sneered. She stalked to the door, grabbing her go bag on the way. “You need to feel sorry for yourself, fine, but don’t think I’m going to help you wallow. You have twenty-four hours to get it out of your system. When I come back, I want to see you ready to work.” She paused. "And don't even think about running. Because I'll come after you, and if I do, you'll damn well wish I was a machine." The door slammed behind her.

All that long day, in between memories of her family, Jesse’s thoughts kept drifting to the Carters. Riley talked about them often and vividly, and Jesse nearly knew them herself: why Garvin was so awful to hotrack with, and how Conway would fall for any prank, no matter how transparent. They were the replacement family Jesse that would come into someday, if only she could manage to live long enough. They would be her reward for having survived.

Except that everything she felt about them, she saw now, that was all Riley. Jesse had never hotracked with them, and never would. If Jesse of the future could sacrifice her own family for the right mission objective, she could sacrifice them, too.

Unlike her own family, the Carters probably knew it. Petty Officer Riley Dawson definitely did.

When Riley returned, Jesse was sitting dry-eyed with her diagrams. “There’s coffee on,” Jesse said, not looking up.

Riley watched Jesse work for a moment. “Good,” she finally said, and poured herself a cup.

 

Whether by administrative cock-up or a twist in the timeline, Ensign Jesse Escondo was assigned to the wrong boat. In a panic, Jesse immediately put for a transfer for the _Rankin_ , where Riley was already serving. Everyone told her she was an idiot for asking for a transfer—earning a reputation as a malcontent with her very first CO would be a major hit to her career—but Jesse couldn't worry about a career that wouldn't last two years. 

She was still waiting for her new orders when the _Rankin_ was lost with all hands in the Sunda trench. 

Jesse went still when the news swept through the _HMAS Farncomb_. Riley had known their plans—every snare, ruse, and ambush—just as well as Jesse. Anything Jesse could do in an encounter with a terminator, Riley could do as well. And yet the terminator had won anyway. 

When Jesse finally had time alone, she didn’t cry: Navy showers don't allow time for tears.

In the wake of the _Rankin's_ catastrophe, the _Farncomb_ was immediately recalled to port. During the sail home, Jesse saw Riley in every compartment and corridor. Jesse didn't know where Riley had died, nor how; consequently, she died everywhere. Half the time, Jesse died with her.

The _Farncomb_ sat in port for months while politicians took their time deciding the submarine service’s fate. It seemed possible that despite missing its nominal target, Skynet had nevertheless succeeded not only in neutralizing Jesse herself, but also in permanently beaching every submariner who might step forward to fill her shoes. Jesse vented her anxiety by hounding command for every scrap of findings produced by the _Rankin_ investigative board, compulsively reviewing them against the plans she and Riley had made, trying to divine the weakness that the terminator had exploited. There was still the possibility that Skynet had not yet won, and Jesse needed to be ready.

Five months later, the _Farncomb_ motored out of port under a precarious parliamentary reprieve, her usually shorthanded company filled out with sailors from _Rankin’s_ second crew. 

Jesse stood her watches haunted by the scent of fried electronics and the suctioning squelch of flesh pulling away from steel. Off-watch, she spent as much time as she could justify in the mess, attempting to determine if any among the boat’s complement of fifty-four didn’t eat.

Six days into the cruise, the call for action stations sounded. Jesse stayed at her position in the control room exactly long enough to learn the source of the emergency. “Ensign Escondo! Return to your station!” her XO bellowed after her, but Jesse ignored him, already pelting down the stairs on her way to the lower engine room.

"Make a hole!" Jesse shouted as she ran along the passageway, her steel-toed boots clanging on the gratings, "Damn you, _make a hole!_ " Sailors pressed themselves against bulkheads to give her space as she passed. 

By the time she reached the engine room hatch, three sailors already lay dead on the floor. A fourth calmly pulled apart coolant piping with inhuman strength. Seawater blasted into the compartment from a broken hose.  

A fifth sailor crowded into the room ahead of her, yelling his outrage at the machine.

Jesse grabbed the man by the collar of his poopy suit and hauled him back outside. "Give me two minutes to get him clear, and then deal with that leak," she ordered him. The sailor tried to talk back, but Jesse shoved him where she wanted him. "That's an _order,_ you fucking puke!" The sailor stayed put.

Jesse entered the room, staying near the door. The terminator didn't look up from what it was doing. “Hey!” Jesse yelled, “I'm Jesse Flores! I’m the one you're here for!”

The terminator stopped.

“That’s right, you fucking tin can! I’m talking to you! Turn around and look at me, I'm Jesse Flores!”

It swiveled its head toward her, its expression blank. Lifeless eyes contemplated her. She was twelve again, scrawny in her bathers and ill-fitting sneakers. Doom wrapped tight around her chest. 

“I’m Jesse!” she screamed at it, to make herself breathe. _“I’m Jesse fucking Flores!”_

The future hung motionless. Then the machine abandoned its destruction and walked toward her.

“That’s right, baby,” she breathed, touching her clasp-knife for luck, “come try and catch me.”

Jesse ran.


End file.
